Introductions

How exciting – my first ever blog post!  My name is Jennifer Bird-Pollan, and I am a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, teaching a variety of tax classes.  My research over the past few years has focused primarily on wealth transfer taxation, in particular on the interaction between current policies taxing transfers at death and various philosophical views of distributive justice.  I am also in the final stages of drafting a dissertation on the subject of philosophy and wealth transfer taxation in completion of a PhD in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

I am looking forward to interacting with my fellow bloggers and others on issues arising in the areas of wealth transfer taxation, but also in the interaction between tax and philosophy more broadly.  As the practical implementation of our national views on questions of distributive justice, the tax code incorporates important philosophical choices that are not always unpacked.  I am particularly interested in situations where our national political and philosophical preferences seem incongruous with our tax policy choices.

I am also hoping to have conversations around teaching tax in a law school.  I am about to wrap up my sixth year of teaching tax in a law school, and I learn something new about it every semester that I do it.  I plan to blog about some of my general thoughts, and look forward to hearing from others about their experiences as tax teachers.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and thanks in particular to Sam Brunson and Shu-Yi Oei for getting our brand new blog off the ground!